26개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
Y'day evening/night(*) and today afternoon thousands of S.K. (incl. migrant)workers celebrated their struggle against exploitation and opression in 2010... Simultaneously the rallies marked the beginning of the Anti-G20 Struggle Campaign.
Yonhap reported a short while ago the following: Just days ahead of the G-20 summit in Seoul, tens of thousands of South Koreans rallied in the capital on Sunday, opposing the ratification of a free trade deal between their country and the United States and urging the government to improve labor rights. The rally, which marked the 40th anniversary of the death of a prominent labor activist, drew 40,000 workers and activists according to organizers...
Yesterday evening/night in front of Seoul Stn. The 'warm up' rally for the coming (anti-G20)struggle:
Related reports:
☞ 전태일열사 정신계승! 전국노동자대회 (KCTU)
☞ 전태일 열사 40주기-G20회의 앞두고 7일 노동자대회 열려 (TIN)
☞ "우리 다시 전태일 열사가 되자" VoP
☞ “노동자가 희망이다, 연대하면 승리한다” (NewsCham)
Annually, in the beginning of November, the S.Korean working class is celebrating its struggle against exploitation and opression with a massive rally and demonstration:
Seven years ago (2003, Nov. 9), after two weeks of almost daily state terror, executed by thousands of riot cops, against strikes and protests, the "National Workers Rally" has been attacked (by the riot cops) from the beginning..
And - surprise, surprise - finally the "event" escalated a "little bit"...
MUST SEE: "Hong Gil-dong's" video documentary about the..
☞ National Workers Rally 2003.11.9
1. Three month ago we wrote: "During the past days the S.Korean media addressed the ongoing/increasing STATE TERROR - related to the next G-20 Summit in Seoul - against 'undesirable minorities', such as migrant workers, poor street vendors, homeless people.."
Now the "ongoing/increasing STATE TERROR" claimed a first fatality, as MTU reported a few hours ago: "Today one Vietnamese migrant worker died in Gwangmyeong city.
When Seoul immigration raided his company in Gasan-dong (Geumcheon-gu, Seoul) on Oct 29, he tried to run away and fell down from 2nd floor to the ground. He was sent to the hospital, but already he was hopeless at that time.
It is a killing by immigration crackdown..."
*****
2. Today's Korea Times published the following f*cking stupid story:
Arrest warrant for drawing rat on G20 promotion poster?
The prosecution sought an arrest warrant for a 40-year-old man who drew a picture of a rat on a G20 Seoul Summit promotion poster but the request was rejected by the court...
According to the Namdaemun Police Station, a 40-year-old university instructor identified only as Park and his friend were apprehended Sunday for drawing a black rat on seven of such posters with spray paint near Lotte Department Stores in central Seoul early in the morning.
The added image to the poster gave people the impression that a huge rat was holding the lantern symbolizing the G20 Summit with the words, “The world is watching Korea.”
The image of a rat is often used to mock President Lee Myung-bak by liberals.
Police asked the prosecution to file arrest warrants for the two for violence and damaging public assets.
However, the Seoul Central District Court rejected the request saying that there was no risk of them fleeing...
Park reportedly said, “I thought the government was making too much of a fuss about a trifling matter. Any G20 country can host the Summit and it is not much of a big deal. I drew a rat because in Korean the pronunciation, ‘Jee (rat in Korean)’ is similar to that of the English letter ‘G.’ It was an act of humor.”
His lawyer, Park Ju-min said, “It seems that the police are trying to make an example out of Park.”
“The G20 is a very important event for the country and tarnishing its promotional poster is not acceptable,” Cho Chang-bae, who filed for the warrant, told a local daily. “We felt that he was trying to defame the global event.”
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/11/205_75731.html
Last Sat.(10.30), right after the "Nat'l Mass Rally of Irregular Workers", the "Jeon Tae-il Culture Festival" took place in front of Seoul's City Hall and hundreds of activists and citizens joined/enjoyed the event. Here some impressions(*):
* source: 노동의소리
Since last weekend the S. Korean labor movement is recalling with various events(*) the 40th anniversary of Jeon Tae-il's suicide by burning himself to death at the age of 22 in protest of the poor working conditions in South Korean factories. His death brought attention to the substandard labor conditions and helped the formation of labor union movement in S.K.
Today's key issue in the S.Korean ('left-liberal') daily newspaper Hankyoreh is Jeon Tae-il's struggle for basic labor rights in S.K.:
From 1970 to 2010: an unrelenting
call for improved labor conditions
Chun Tae-il’s self-immolation was a turning point in the movement to recognize the rights of laborors
At around 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 13, 1970, Chun Tae-il(Jeon Tae-il), a young fabric cutter at Seoul’s Pyeonghwa Market, set fire to himself in a call for improvements in labor conditions. He was demanding adherence to the Labor Standards Act and time off on Sundays. “We are not machines,” he cried at the time. For Korean intellectuals, who were caught up in the movement for political democratization under the brutal rule of the military administration, Chun’s self-immolation was a tremendous shock. His act was an arrow directed at the conscience of Korean society.
Jeon was born in 1948 in Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province, to poor dressmaker Chun Sang-su and Lee So-seon. Economic deprivation and hunger were constant companions throughout his life. In 1964, when he was sixteen, he went to Seoul in search of his mother, who had gone to earn money. After scraping out a difficult living selling newspapers and shining shoes, he began work the next year as a sewing machine helper at a sewing factory in Pyounghwa Market by the Cheonggyecheon stream.
A garment factory in Pyeonghwa Market(Seoul's Dongdaemun District) in the 1960's
The harsh working conditions lit a fire in Chun’s heart. Young women in their teens worked fifteen-hour days in a loft where they could not stand up straight, yet it was impossible even to eat on their monthly pay. After their long hours of exhausting work, they developed a variety of eye problems, stomach ailments, and neuralgia. Health examinations were perfunctory. Two or three of the factory’s thirty workers received checkups, but the X-ray machine they stood before did not have any film loaded in it.
The labor laws prescribing eight-hour working days and regular health examinations were little more than scraps of paper. The labor supervisor from the labor office was a figurehead. Chun, who had not completed an elementary school education, began teaching himself about the Labor Standards Act, but he had difficulty reading words that were written in Chinese characters. His plaintive wish that he might have a university student friend by his side would pierce the hearts of countless university students after his death.
Together with other cutters, Chun formed the “Fools’ Association” and “Samdong Friendship Association” to investigate labor conditions. At the same time, he worked to let the labor office and press know the truth and sought methods of improvement. Unable to accomplish this due to the insincere efforts of the labor office and the interference of detectives from the police intelligence department, Chun died through self-immolation on Nov. 13, crying, “Don’t let my death be in vain.”...
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/446549.html
Related report:
☞ Decades later, faces change while poor conditions linger... (Hankyoreh, 11.01)
* For more info (in Korean) please check out:
Cartoon in today's Hankyoreh:
Weapons evolved, injustice remains
In the foreground, a key union member of KEC, a maker of mobile phone parts, attempts self-immolation, resisting a surprise arrest by the police in a KEC factory.
Behind the KEC building, a riot police officer uses a club to beat a Ssangyong Union member occupying a factory in protest against a mass dismissal plan by Ssangyong management for selling the company.
A tenant living and struggling against eviction in a Yongsan redevelopment area becomes engulfed in flames on a makeshift watchtower that caught fire during a raid involving scores of riot police officers.
Beside them stand heavily armored riot police armed with sound cannons, tasers, water cannons and shields.
Late laborer Chun Tae-il who died from self-immolation in protest of inhumane labor conditions, looks on, saying, “Though 40 years have passed... the only thing that has improved is the riot police weaponry.”
The KEC union member who attempted self-immolation was taken to the hospital and suffered third-degree burns to his face, chest and right hand. Some 170 union members went on strike following the rupture of negotiations with the management, and occupied the Gumi factory for eleven days.
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